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Archive for October, 2008

SEO is about positioning your service or product with qualities or benefits that people would search for. Last week, I discussed how search engine optimization can improve your business and increase traffic to your website. While that is all fine and dandy, higher traffic to your site doesn’t always mean your SEO has been successful. Natural search efforts should also lead to conversions. To help illustrate my point, I’ll use Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“You have to really try if you want to make some new friends,” I remember my mother saying after a rough first week in a new elementary school. She was right. You can’t wait for people to come to you so, now that I am again new in town, I put myself out there—or so I thought—to arrange a little …

When discussing search engine optimization, you can’t avoid the topic of links. Typically, links are synonymous with external links – other websites pointing to your own. This is obviously a cornerstone of any SEO campaign. However, text links within your website that point to your own content are just as important (call them internal links). More specifically, text links that pass anchor text and PageRank must be utilized within your website to fully support your SEO …

Are you considering targeting your SEO efforts at vertical search engines? John Ellis doesn’t think this is the right strategy. His primary argument is that broad results (a la Google or Yahoo!) lead to trust. ”The broad, sometimes unrelated, results are actually what keep users coming back.”

Free stuff is always great. Especially when you’re talking about quality analytics packages. Yahoo!’s purchase of Index Tools has finally come to fruition, and the free Yahoo! Web Analytics is on …

Search Engine Optimization has always sounded techie with that 3+ syllable word “optimization.” To me, it brings back memories of working on DOS 6.22, re-arranging memory configurations so I could run Warcraft 2 on my 100MHz machine. SEO has carried this connotation for years of being a cold type of function where it was only listed in job descriptions for those in high level IT. Now, it is thrown around with little or no real understanding of what it …

You’ve wisely decided that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is right for your company’s website. You’ve seen what it has done for colleagues and competitors and you don’t want to miss out on the benefits any longer. But who do you charge with the task? How do you assign the rights and delegate the duties of your SEO project?

I’ve seen it happen on more than one occasion. Embarking on a new SEO project can be a difficult undertaking in that there …

You’ve got a great looking site, the product or service you offer is cool and lots of people want it, but the traffic to your site isn’t what you dreamed it would be. It’s a startling reminder that the old adage, “if you build it they will come” just doesn’t play out in today’s web landscape.
So what can you do?

Here are a 10 simple steps to start your Search Engine Optimization campaign off on the right foot:

The Beu Blog reported that bullet points concerning paid directories have been removed from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Does this mean Google has de-valued paid directories like Yahoo! or Business.com? Only time will tell (or a direct statement from Google, of course).

Need some ideas for obtaining quality links to your website? Justilien Gaspard’s article at Search Engine Watch explains how to utilize Link Marketing and the process of solving customer problems/offering solutions to build links and awareness.

Drum roll please… Today, it is my pleasure to present the search marketing industry’s newest wonder kid – SEO Boy! You likely already know our junior caped crusader as PPC Hero’s fearless sidekick. Over the last year and a half, SEO Boy has been content to be numero dos, but the time has come for him to step out from under that shadow and share his mad SEO …